GrrrRantEd

Granted. Outlawing guns won't absolutely keep them out of criminal or terroristic hands. After all, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws' children will accidentally shoot themselves at home.

Thus I head off at the pass the bad-guys-will-be-bad-guys response to the following brief rant.

You know, there are potholes the size of bomb craters in the main streets of Lusaka. I think we would really be better served using concrete for building new and better roads in Africa, rather than for repairing bomb damage in London and New York. And may I say the "we get to use guns but you don't" approach only works, and just barely then, if you're the police.
What the neocons have gotten the US into is being the cops of the world, but as a rogue department that refuses to cooperate with or acknowledge the legitimacy of city hall (the UN). This is done in low-brow and high-brow ways. The low-brow ways include the impotence of the UN--which we guarantee by not cooperating with it--and "American national interest," about which more in a moment. The high-brow way is to appeal to our moral role in the world.
Appeals to higher ethical authority, accompanied by violent implementation, are very hard to distinguish from appeals to "higher ethical authority," accompanied by violent implementation. There is a difference, but it's in the nature of self-justifying rationalizations to mimic or counterfeit actually justifying reasoning. And getting shot for a good reason presumably looks rather similar to getting shot for a fallacious reason.
As for American national interests, economically our national interest is in keeping China safe for WalMart. Oh, and although people are having trouble figuring this out, it's also in spending all our road and gasoline taxes on getting fuel cells here tomorrow, so we don't depend on oil.
Why are the free trade people so often also the free fire people? I don't think it has to be that way.
True, guns rarely kill people by themselves. It takes people armed with guns to kill, with guns, other people. But if that's what you're interested in, there are, historically, other ways to kill people. In fact, I think there'd be an advantage in using other methods. After all, if we had to do it with machetes, like they did in Rwanda, rather than with AKs and IEDs, then even if it didn't make people hesitate, which I think it would, it still at least would take longer.
Now, to quote Dennis Miller, I don't want to go out on a limb here, but just maybe, ways to kill people could possibly not be what the "love your enemies" crowd should be focusing our attention on. Not to be Christian about it or anything, and not to shortchange the world's investment in getting rid of Hitler, but may I just say I have never heard a response or a better answer to this comment I make from time to time: that if you can, ideally, just at least as the thing to try first: the best way to get rid of your enemies...is to make them your friends.